


somewhere i have never travelled

by nagi_schwarz



Series: Traveling Man [36]
Category: NCIS, Stargate Atlantis
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-09
Updated: 2018-03-09
Packaged: 2019-03-28 21:37:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,377
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13912701
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nagi_schwarz/pseuds/nagi_schwarz
Summary: Written for the coming/going comment_fic prompt: "Any, Any, Character A has Character B so turned around they don’t know if they’re coming or going."Tony DiNozzo, Agent Afloat Atlantis. Navigating battleships is hard. Navigating space battlecruisers and Ancient city-starships is harder. Luckily for Tony, Major Evan Lorne is always just a radio call away.





	somewhere i have never travelled

It was bad enough that Tony had been banished from Gibbs’s MCRT in the wake of Director Shepard’s death. It was worse that he’d been told he was going to be Agent Afloat on a battleship only to report for duty and be rerouted to Colorado Springs, Colorado, which was definitely landlocked, and be told he was being stationed on a battleship he’d never heard before called _Atlantis._

Only it wasn’t a battleship, it was an alien city-starship, which Tony learned only after he had signed away his immortal soul in an NDA, and it was in another freakin’ galaxy.

It wasn’t an instantaneous trip, oh no. Yes, there was some amount of _beam me up, Scottie,_ and there was a spaceship with a hyperdrive for FTL travel, but it was still an eighteen-day journey from Earth to New Lantea.

Tony knew his way around battleships, but this spaceship belonged to the Air Force, not the Navy, and it wasn’t organized or laid out or even marked the same way, so Tony was pretty much lost.

All the time.

Even though he was a civilian agent, he was issued a uniform, a hideous gray polyester tracksuit affair with red panels on it that marked him as Atlantis personnel but a civilian. He was also issued a series of red shirts (he shuddered at the implication and missed McGee and then blamed McGee), a pair of military boots, and given permission to carry a sidearm.

So Tony was lost all the time, was wearing hideous clothes, and he was on his way to another galaxy and he hadn’t really processed that fact. And then he met Major Evan Lorne, who was the military second-in-command on the Atlantis base. Lorne had been on Earth for annual leave, and he was ready to get back to work.

Lorne was good-looking in a wholesome, sweet, boy-next-door all grown up kind of way, broad shoulders and blue eyes and soft dark hair and dimpled smile. He was friendly, too, a lot friendlier than Tony had expected, given the sheer number of stoic, macho, grumpy military men he’d encountered in his life (and he didn’t dare linger on thoughts of Gibbs). Lorne also knew the layout of the _Daedalus_ like the back of his hand, and whenever Tony was lost, Lorne was a radio call away to give him directions.

For eighteen days, Tony was lonely, lost, and ugly, and Lorne’s voice was in his radio earpiece, guiding him to safety, security, and comfort every time.

Lorne was incredibly busy, though, was always eating food on the go, answering questions here, filling out forms there, organizing supplies two decks down, and it was like a high school cafeteria all over again: Tony had no one to sit with. He ended up sitting just close enough to other people that he didn’t look pathetic and alone but not so close that he was intruding on their established social circles.

One time, Tony was desperate enough that he called Lorne on the radio and pretended to be lost just to hear his voice.

It was a pretty good ruse until Lorne said, “You’re not really lost, are you?”

Tony sat up straighter, indignant. “Why would you say that?”

“Because,” Lorne said, “if you’d followed my directions, you’d be standing right in front of me, but I’m still all by myself on the engine deck.”

Tony’s heart skipped a beat. Lorne sounded almost - flirty.

Tony swung both ways. _Nobody_ knew that, not even Ziva, as perceptive as she was. (Well, no one but the men he’d hooked up with and dated.)

“You know,” Lorne said, “you don’t have to eat in the mess hall. Just grab your food and go, like I do. You get more done that way.”

Tony didn’t have a lot to do, though. Apart from reading personnel files and the SGC orientation materials, he was beholden to no one and nothing. Best as he understood it, SecNav was _pissed_ that the Navy had been cut out of the loop as far as the SGC, that the Air Force and _not_ the Navy was running the space battlecruisers, and that the NID (which was like a colander in an ocean) was doing law enforcement as well as other investigations. So SecNav huffed and puffed and managed to get one Agent Afloat into the program, on the base with the biggest contingent of Marines - Atlantis.

Of course, the program was so classified that Tony wasn’t sending his reports to anyone but pretty much SecNav himself. Apparently not even the President had known about the program for years, so SecNav not knowing wasn’t as big an affront as he thought, or Tony had heard as local scuttlebutt.

Tony worked out, he ran, he learned to identify the newest wave of Atlantis Marines at a glance.

And he was bored.

He started with all the Marines’ files, but he’d be the LEO for the entire Atlantis base. He was taking over for - of course, Major Evan Lorne, who’d up to this point handled the issue of pilfered porno mags and wrongfully borrowed DVDs and video games with aplomb. So after he got done with the Marine files he read all the civilian personnel files, and then the senior command files.

Evan Lorne had been raised by a bunch of women pacifists on a hippie commune in California, sun and surf and an unfortunate mullet, but on his SRB he was a well-respected officer, did his duty well, had a couple of hiccups which spoke to some conflict with science personnel. He’d grown from that, and the civilians loved him because he made sure they had coffee. Tony was baffled, because Lorne seemed like the poster boy for Air Force excellence, but then he noticed - Lorne smiled more, was more expressive, was freer with physical contact during conversation than most men Tony knew. Badass space soldier raised by hippie women.

Once the _Daedalus_ reached Atlantis, Tony was beamed down with all the personnel and got lost in the ensuing shuffle. Dr. Zelenka arrived to show the new scientists to their living quarters. Major Teldy arrived to show the new military personnel to their quarters. And then a swarm of Marines - Tony recognized at least half of them from their file photos - arrived to haul away all of the new supplies that were beamed down.

The returning personnel headed up the steps from the gate room to greet their colleagues. Major Lorne set his duffel bag at the foot of the steps and directed the moving crew.

What was Tony supposed to do?

“Agent DiNozzo.”

He started, turned, and came face-to-face with Teyla Emmagan. An alien. She looked completely human, but - an alien.

“Please, come with me,” she said. “Dr. Weir wishes to meet you. Once you are finished, I will show you to your quarters.”

Dr. Weir was pleased to see him, was glad to have the help. Colonel Sheppard was present, said it was a good thing that someone was taking some of the load off of Lorne’s shoulders. Dr. McKay was also present, had some questions about his missing stash of coffee, but before he could describe the alleged theft in too much detail, Teyla cut in smoothly and guided Tony out of Weir’s office and to an elevator that was actually a _beam me up Scottie_ in a box.

Teyla called it a transporter.

If Tony had been confused on the spaceship, Atlantis was downright disastrous, because there was no signage anywhere, and when Tony asked for directions, people gave him the names and designations of corridors and levels and piers and towers, but none of them meant anything because there were _no signs._

But Lorne was everywhere. All the time. Settling a dispute between two scientists in the labs while Tony was taking McKay’s statement about the coffee theft. In the gate room getting ready to head out on a mission while Tony was asking Chuck the gate tech to help him with which radio frequencies were for which department. He was in the mess hall supervising the KP Marines when Tony went for lunch. He was speeding past Tony on one of the exterior balconies, leading his team on a morning run, shirtless, skin golden and gleaming with sweat in the early morning sun. He was in the gym, throwing down with Ronon (and losing gracefully) when Tony was looking for a place to work out.

Tony saw him all the time but never got to talk to him, barely managed to make eye contact with him. He missed Lorne’s voice.

And then Chuck gave him the secret - the frequency that only senior command used to reach Lorne.

Major Evan Lorne had Tony so turned around he didn’t know if he was coming or going. Because the first time Tony dared to use the radio frequency, nervous that he was engaging in some hideous breach of protocol, Lorne invited him to lunch. On one of the balconies. It seemed like a quick, casual thing, just the two of them looking out over the waves, eating a couple of sandwiches, making small talk about how Tony was settling in. But after, Tony learned that the sandwiches had been made from bread Lorne baked himself from a sourdough starter he’d gotten from his grandmother in San Francisco, that he’d fed and nurtured for the entirety of the _Daedalus_ trip, and he was very choosy about who got his bread.

And then Lorne invited Tony to go running with his team, which Tony did, because he appreciated fitness; he’d been a PE major in college. Also Tony was invited to be Lorne’s gym buddy, spotting each other during weight lifting. Tony was invited along to movie night with Lorne’s team, and game night with Lorne’s team, and pretty much every social event with Lorne’s team. If Tony weren’t on a military installation with a bunch of the biggest, most badass Marines the Armed Forces could spare to fight space vampires and nuclear-capable Amish, he’d have thought he was back in college, hanging with his dorm buddies and sort of dating one of them.

Because not only was Tony invited to hang out with Lorne and his team all the time when they weren’t offworld or otherwise occupied with space soldier duties, he was around _Evan_ all the time. He sat next to Evan during movies, was the recipient of Evan’s wry commentary and sly asides. He sat opposite Evan at meals - because now he had people to eat with; even if not Evan, someone on AR-3 would sit with him - and was the focus of his attention, on the receiving end of Evan’s bright, dimpled smiles and heated glances.

A month into living on Atlantis, into solving petty thefts, minor disturbances, and disrupting a carefully-planned prank campaign, Tony still got lost if he wasn’t going to Control, the gym, the mess hall, or his own quarters. He still needed Evan in his ear (and he missed Evan’s voice when he was gone), but sometimes Evan was so distracted with his task at hand (because the man continued to be insanely busy) that he would rattle off utterly meaningless coordinates and Tony would try to follow them and end up so lost he didn’t even know left from right anymore.

“Um, I think those coordinates are for the mud rooms,” Tony said, stepping around the muddy footprints tracked from the gate room to the nearby shower room.

Evan sighed. “What? Oh. Sorry. I think you mixed up the floor number and the hall number. You’re by the mud rooms?”

“I don’t mean to bother you,” Tony said. He was basically the school resource officer, a monkey wrench in a well-oiled machine, and Evan was the base 2IC in addition to leading his own gate team.

“No, just -” Evan groaned. “I can’t do this anymore. I need to walk away before I throw something.”

Tony flinched.

“Not you! Just - this task. All right, follow my voice.”

Tony did, like he always did - and ended up on a balcony overlooking the southwest pier.

The sun was setting over the horizon, and it was beautiful.

Tony frowned. “I think we’re _both_ lost now.”

“No,” Evan said, and stood beside him.

Tony glanced at him. “I was trying to get to the oceanography lab ready room.”

“Like I said, I needed a break.” Evan returned the glance, and Tony was pretty sure he wasn’t imagining the heat in his gaze. “Then I’ll take you where you want to go.”

“Where I need to go,” Tony corrected. “Not where I want to go.”

Evan turned to him. “Where do you _want_ to go?”

 _“Somewhere I have never travelled, gladly beyond,”_ Tony said, because he was well-read, and he wanted to be sure he was reading this right.

Evan raised his eyebrows. _“Rendering death and forever with each breathing_ or _the snow carefully everywhere descending?”_

“Somewhere Spring,” Tony said, impressed with Evan’s literary knowledge. He stepped closer to Evan, and Evan remained still, let Tony into his personal space. “Can you take me where I want to go?”

“I think,” Evan said, his voice barely above a whisper, his breath on Tony’s mouth almost a kiss, “it’s time for you to leave the nest. I can tell you how to get where you want to go.”

“How?”

Evan recited a series of coordinates, brushed his lips against Tony’s, and then spun out of reach, vanished back inside the city.

Tony stood on the balcony for a moment, heart racing. And then he realized. Those coordinates led to the military residential tower. Evan’s quarters. He darted back into the city, headed for the nearest transporter - and got lost.

In desperation - and eagerness and arousal - he radioed Chuck.

“How do I get to Major Lorne’s quarters?”

Chuck sighed, longsuffering, and told him.

Tony thanked him and stepped back into the transporter, tapped his radio. To Evan he said, “You have me so turned around I don’t know if I’m coming or going.”

“Find me and you’ll only be doing one of those from here on out.”

Tony nodded even though he knew Evan couldn’t see him, and when the transporter doors opened, he ran.

**Author's Note:**

> Title from the poem of almost the same name by e.e. cummings


End file.
